Priya Parker wrote an excellent book called ‘The Art of Gathering’. ‘How we meet’ is a vital human experience, but too often we don’t give it enough thought. We spend our lives gathering, with family, friends, in school, at weddings, business meetings, class reunions, dinner parties, sports groups, religious ceremonies, and at the end of our lives, our loved ones gather at our funerals. We all intuitively know that gathering is important. Read more...

People regret inaction more than action Consistently- people regret not doing. Example : people regret NOT asking out someone, rather than asking out someone. Actions can be undone. Inaction is harder. Daniel H. Pink describes 4 consistent categories of regret seen across different ages and cultures. 1. Foundation Regrets ‘If only I’d done the work’ Examples Not taking care of health Not studying harder in school Not saving enough money 2. Read more...

A reminder for myself. When a task or project looks overwhelming, that’s just the mind projecting and creating fantasy stories/problems. You can reframe it. Nothing is hard if you break it down into enough steps To write a novel, you just have to write one page a day for 365 days. In gymnastics, progressive overload over 10 years will get you to >99.9% of the human population. To get through an exam, just practice an hour a day for a long enough time, so that the information sticks. Read more...

I’ve changed the design of the blog, so that it is more simplistic. Just words. Posts organised by date. You can just scroll back through the timeline, pick a topic and explore some of the ideas that I was working through at the time. The re-design has made me think about digital spaces. We are already living in a metaverse. The only difference is that the medium of exchange of information is through a black rectangle, rather than through the different senses available. Read more...

Imagine you were able to lucid dream. You could live any reality you wanted. The first instances might start off with vagrant hedonism. Satisfying all your desires. This would soon lose its charm. The hedonic treadmill. The first bite of a donut is always better than the second, and better than the 99th donut. At some point, hedonism devolves into gluttony. So at this point in time, you may decide that hedonism is not the way. Read more...

I’ve met some incredibly compassionate and kind people in life. It’s almost hypnotic. They radiate an aura of ‘contentedness’ - although that may just be my projection. When I was 20, I spoke to a lady once who had literally been doing ‘metta’ meditation for 40 years + regularly, with several retreats. I think that exposed me to the idea, that This is trainable There are people out there who make this a goal in life. Read more...

Sonder : the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own I’ve heard this word a few times. Everyone has an internal life as complex and rich as yours. You take this for granted. Often when you superficially interact with people, you don’t assume that they have a complex internal world full of insecurities, conflicts, joy, sadness, excitement etc. All the range of human experience. Read more...

A useful way of seeing, is framing things not as a struggle, but as a dance ‘I’m learning to dance with my emotion’ I’m learning to dance with joy/gratitude I’m learning to dance with sadness and grief You can’t hold onto joy, and expect it to last. To truly appreciate joy, one must experience it fully in the moment, and then let go. Similarly for any arising of anger, jealously, grief. Read more...

TLDR : A compendium of current thoughts on freedom Political and ideological freedom is up-stream of financial freedom You want to have ‘f’ u money, and then think about ideologies and politics. Money is the engine of change (a reality) - and fuels innovation (science, spreading of memes, technologies). You can’t worry about politics when your own house is not in order. Pay your bills first. Locally fix, before thinking about global issues. Read more...

Before you commit, trial the experience/item Before you make a major financial purchase e.g. moving location, buying a large/expensive item, see if you can ‘rent’ or ‘trial’ it. I think I’ve made this mistake a lot. Often buying items that didn’t really improve my quality of life or contentment (or of others around me) but instead became a burden What you own ends up owning you Examples Read more...